Improbable Research at AAAS 2011: Ars becomes part of the show

Ignoring the advice that a journalist should never become part of the show, …

I'm fairly sure that most of you know what the IgNobel awards are by now, but for those who don't, they're an annual prize given across a range of disciplines for research that makes people laugh before they think. But there's more to it than just the awards. The Annals of Improbable Research is the award's companion publication, and it has a website too. Marc Abrahams, the man behind the IgNobels and editor of the Annals, also takes the show on the road, often going to the annual AAAS meeting. Ars Technica went along to cover the event, unwittingly becoming part of the show.

Having been told that the event in Boston the year before was standing-room only, I headed over to the room early, expecting a scrum. It was somewhat less crowded than I expected, although the room filled up quite rapidly once the proceedings got underway. Curiously, the bearded among the audience were encouraged to sit up front. Despite being (relatively) clean shaven, no one seemed to mind my sitting in the third row—close enough to get a better view of the action. There were several rather impressive beards in the audience, and their owners dutifully took up their place at the front.

Marc Abrahams, the event's emcee, went into a bit of background on the IgNobels. Anyone can send in nominations; you can nominate the authors of a random paper you might have read, your friends, your enemies, or even yourself. The Annals receives 7,000 new nominations each year, and only 10 are chosen. Anything not picked goes back in the pool, so it's not easy to win.

Winners are given the opportunity to decline the award, although very few have done so. Winners must attend the ceremony at Harvard to win, where they are presented with the Prize and a certificate signed by several actual Nobel laureates who are usually present. Finally, to keep the congratulatory speeches from dragging on too long, an eight-year-old girl decides when she's had enough and walks up to the podium to repeatedly tell whomever is speaking that she's bored now.

You can read more about the 2010 winners in our previous coverage, but there were some amusing anecdotes about the winners. The Medicine Prize went to a group that showed that roller coasters were effective at reducing the symptoms of asthma. One of the authors was blind, but despite his pleas, he was not allowed to take his dog along for the ride. The Management Prize was given to the authors of a study that showed that organizations could actually become more efficient if they promoted people at random—and this was not the first time this subject had been explored. A decade earlier, a group from the UK discovered the same effect, but the authors of that original publication were so frightened by the conclusion that they buried it in a single sentence in the discussion.

At this point, forgetting the adage that the journalist should never become part of the story, your author somehow ended up on stage. To provide some context, in 2009, Dr. Eleana Bodnar, a Ukrainian physician, won the Public Health Prize for inventing a bra that can turn into a pair of emergency face masks, one for the wearer of the brassiere and one for a lucky bystander. We had been shown video footage of the 2009 ceremony, with a first amused, then slightly shocked-looking pair of Nobel laureates (Paul Krugman, Economics 2008; Wolfgang Ketterle, Physics, 2001) being used as demonstration models, as Dr. Bodnar removed her invention which she was wearing it at the time, and attached it to their faces. Dr. Bodnar then whipped out another bra, one half of which was then strapped to Orham Parmuk (Literature, 2006).

As you can see from the photograph above, I helped model Dr. Bodnar's invention, an example of which had been brought along. More uncomfortable than a standard N95 particulate mask, the underwire tends to pinch your face, and the half of the backstrap that belongs to each cup causes a great deal of face-squishing. As an emergency face mask, I could certainly see it being useful for keeping dust out of your lungs, but for a gas attack or airborne virus, you might be taking your life in someone else's cup.

Pizzas in the wild and more

Eric Schulman, author of A Briefer History of Time then came on stage to give, well, a briefer history of time, and I captured great video of this 60-second tale of creation to the present day, but since it didn't seem to be on my phone when I got home, you'll just have to take my word for it that it was really quite good.

Robert Friedel was up next, to give a talk demonstrating the role of pizza through history, which I can't really do justice to, beyond telling you that early attempts to catch pizzas in their natural habitat didn't always succeed, so it's a good thing we can artificially breed them now.

Following this, Martin Eiger, the Limerick Laureate of the IgNobels took the stage, and summed up a number of publications as limericks. This was particularly cool, and I couldn't help but think most papers ought to include a limerick, perhaps instead of an abstract. The reader would certainly get the take-home point pretty quickly.

Earlier in the evening, Marc Abrahams had announced that we would be witnessing a first—Dr. Manuel Barbeito would be receiving his IgNobel Prize for Public Health at the event, which I think represents the first time a winner didn't have to travel to the official prize-giving ceremony. A microbiologist at Ft. Detrick, MD during World War II, Dr. Barbeito had been concerned by a bearded colleague with seemingly no concern about the potential of his facial hair to act as a contamination vector. When working with dangerous pathogens, you really don't want to be taking them out of the lab and around town with you, after all. Dr. Barbeito raised his concerns with his boss, and when a literature search revealed no data either way, he was told to go off and conduct the experiments to determine whether or not beards and dangerous microbes were a good mix.

What followed was a series of experiments that did indeed show the ability of microbial organisms to stick to beards, and as a result, if you wanted to work on them at Ft. Detrick, you had to break out the razor. By 1967 the work had been declassified and published, and that brings us up to today. In some ways I think Dr. Barbeito is the spiritual forebear of today's Human Microbiome Project, which is sequencing and cataloging the multitudes of bacteria that live happily on your skin, mucus membranes, and inside your digestive tract, although the main difference is that Dr. Barbeito's work involved non-endogenous bacteria. Although there were no Nobel laureates there to present Dr. Barbeito's prize, the men with beards in the audience formed a line and came to shake his hand individually. I should note that Dr. Barbeito himself is clean-shaven.

28 Reader Comments

Finally, to keep the congratulatory speeches from dragging on too long, an eight-year-old girl decides when she's had enough and walks up to the podium to repeatedly tell whomever is speaking that she's bored now.

lol, Brilliant -- should be used at all those award shows where pompous asses blather on about their "craft" and how everyone now loves them.

I had to Google AAAS to find out what it stood for. Please keep in mind that not everyone is familiar with every acronym even if it is one that's widely known to people in the science community.

Actually, I just googled it and I still don't know. I checked out the topmost, most probable hit: the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and it looks like their 2011 meeting was in DC, and the 2010 one was in San Diego. Nothing seems to map to Boston.

There's a few other AAAS's out there, too. In fact, I live in Boston and also in proximity to no less than two organizations that have AAAS as their acronyms, plus I have exposure to the aaas.org one through some friends.

I had to Google AAAS to find out what it stood for. Please keep in mind that not everyone is familiar with every acronym even if it is one that's widely known to people in the science community.

Actually, I just googled it and I still don't know. I checked out the topmost, most probable hit: the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and it looks like their 2011 meeting was in DC, and the 2010 one was in San Diego. Nothing seems to map to Boston.

There's a few other AAAS's out there, too. In fact, I'm in proximity to no less than three organizations that have AAAS as their acronyms.

AAAS is the American Association for the Advancement of Science (they publish the journal Science among others things) and their annual conference was held in Boston a few years ago. Jonathan simply mistyped, I believe.

We've also been reporting on our experiences with it in DC for the past few weeks and haven't gotten any complaints about the acronym until today?

"As you can see from the photograph above, I helped model Dr. Bodnar's invention, an example of which had been brought along."

She's cute, I'm not sure I'd be complaining.

That isn't Dr. Bodnar, but another audience volunteer. Also, do we really have to have these kinds of comments every single time a picture of a woman is used in a front page post? Let's leave the Jackie Treehorn at home.

I had to Google AAAS to find out what it stood for. Please keep in mind that not everyone is familiar with every acronym even if it is one that's widely known to people in the science community.

Actually, I just googled it and I still don't know. I checked out the topmost, most probable hit: the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and it looks like their 2011 meeting was in DC, and the 2010 one was in San Diego. Nothing seems to map to Boston.

There's a few other AAAS's out there, too. In fact, I'm in proximity to no less than three organizations that have AAAS as their acronyms.

AAAS is the American Association for the Advancement of Science (they publish the journal Science among others things) and their annual conference was held in Boston a few years ago. Jonathan simply mistyped, I believe.

We've also been reporting on our experiences with it in DC for the past few weeks and haven't gotten any complaints about the acronym until today?

You might also note how few comments are in threads with the AAAS. Bring a bra into the mix and suddenly arsians are interested.

That isn't Dr. Bodnar, but another audience volunteer. Also, do we really have to have these kinds of comments every single time a picture of a woman is used in a front page post?

Yes, and excuse me, but if you don't like the response, don't post the content I mean seriously, you post an article with a picture of a women putting a bra on your face and giving the thumbs up... really...

That isn't Dr. Bodnar, but another audience volunteer. Also, do we really have to have these kinds of comments every single time a picture of a woman is used in a front page post?

Yes, and excuse me, but if you don't like the response, don't post the content I mean seriously, you post an article with a picture of a women putting a bra on your face and giving the thumbs up... really...

"As you can see from the photograph above, I helped model Dr. Bodnar's invention, an example of which had been brought along."

She's cute, I'm not sure I'd be complaining.

That isn't Dr. Bodnar, but another audience volunteer. Also, do we really have to have these kinds of comments every single time a picture of a woman is used in a front page post? Let's leave the Jackie Treehorn at home.

I know the responses can be disheartening in general, but in this case where the researcher actually took her bra off and put it on two Nobel Laureates, I think it's pretty reasonable for once. Heck, it might even be on-topic.

That isn't Dr. Bodnar, but another audience volunteer. Also, do we really have to have these kinds of comments every single time a picture of a woman is used in a front page post?

Yes, and excuse me, but if you don't like the response, don't post the content I mean seriously, you post an article with a picture of a women putting a bra on your face and giving the thumbs up... really...

I didn't think so at first, but BeowulfSchaeffer has a point.

I'm actually with the author on this. It's kind of embarrassing to visit a site where a picture of a woman has the, presumably, male posters nearly slobbering all over themselves. Would the comment have been made if a guy was putting the bra on his face? Somehow I doubt it. That video a while back with the female host was another great example.

The thumbs up could mean almost anything. As in, "Hey, I have a bra on my face and it actually sort of works as a facemask." That would be opposed to "Awesome, there's a woman putting a bra on my face!!", which is apparently what BeowulfSchaeffer expects to be the only possible reason to give a thumbs up while sporting a bra mask.

We've also been reporting on our experiences with it in DC for the past few weeks and haven't gotten any complaints about the acronym until today?

I was going to complain about the unexplained acronym a week or two ago (first time I'd seen AAAS mentioned here in a while) but didn't bother. Expansions of acronyms that are not routinely used are *always* appreciated by those not in the know (and easily glossed over by those who are familiar).

"As you can see from the photograph above, I helped model Dr. Bodnar's invention, an example of which had been brought along."

She's cute, I'm not sure I'd be complaining.

That isn't Dr. Bodnar, but another audience volunteer. Also, do we really have to have these kinds of comments every single time a picture of a woman is used in a front page post? Let's leave the Jackie Treehorn at home.

Let him say what he wants, that's me!! To keep it in perspective, I volunteered to demonstrate bat fellatio on stage with puppets.

One think about Dr. Bodnar that still has me wondering: when she whipped out the second bra, was there a third?

Finally, to keep the congratulatory speeches from dragging on too long, an eight-year-old girl decides when she's had enough and walks up to the podium to repeatedly tell whomever is speaking that she's bored now.

lol, Brilliant -- should be used at all those award shows where pompous asses blather on about their "craft" and how everyone now loves them.

I was going to post that. I have done this myself at sci-fi cons, although now the girl is 12 and has a longer attention span, thus her usefulness from pompous authors decreases with age. Thankfully, she has a 9 year old brother with ADHD ready in the wings.

We've also been reporting on our experiences with it in DC for the past few weeks and haven't gotten any complaints about the acronym until today?

I was going to complain about the unexplained acronym a week or two ago (first time I'd seen AAAS mentioned here in a while) but didn't bother. Expansions of acronyms that are not routinely used are *always* appreciated by those not in the know (and easily glossed over by those who are familiar).

Okay, I will take that to heart and make sure we (I at the very least) explain similar things more fully in the future.

"As you can see from the photograph above, I helped model Dr. Bodnar's invention, an example of which had been brought along."

She's cute, I'm not sure I'd be complaining.

That isn't Dr. Bodnar, but another audience volunteer. Also, do we really have to have these kinds of comments every single time a picture of a woman is used in a front page post? Let's leave the Jackie Treehorn at home.

Have to agree with OP, this sounds a bit hypocritical coming from the guy with his thumbs up in the picture.

"As you can see from the photograph above, I helped model Dr. Bodnar's invention, an example of which had been brought along."

She's cute, I'm not sure I'd be complaining.

That isn't Dr. Bodnar, but another audience volunteer. Also, do we really have to have these kinds of comments every single time a picture of a woman is used in a front page post? Let's leave the Jackie Treehorn at home.

Let him say what he wants, that's me!! To keep it in perspective, I volunteered to demonstrate bat fellatio on stage with puppets.

One think about Dr. Bodnar that still has me wondering: when she whipped out the second bra, was there a third?

If the response here seems sore, it's because we're still on edge from the actually inappropriate comments on this video from 2 weeks ago. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/201 ... ds-101.ars So people in this forum are being extra-vigilant about propriety lately. They're not always this uptight. And nice choice of nick, BTW :-)

"As you can see from the photograph above, I helped model Dr. Bodnar's invention, an example of which had been brought along."

She's cute, I'm not sure I'd be complaining.

That isn't Dr. Bodnar, but another audience volunteer. Also, do we really have to have these kinds of comments every single time a picture of a woman is used in a front page post? Let's leave the Jackie Treehorn at home.

Let him say what he wants, that's me!! To keep it in perspective, I volunteered to demonstrate bat fellatio on stage with puppets.

One think about Dr. Bodnar that still has me wondering: when she whipped out the second bra, was there a third?

If the response here seems sore, it's because we're still on edge from the actually inappropriate comments on this video from 2 weeks ago. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/201 ... ds-101.ars So people in this forum are being extra-vigilant about propriety lately. They're not always this uptight. And nice choice of nick, BTW :-)

This is exactly the reason.

As for tyrsius's implication as to why I'm giving the crowd the thumbs up, it couldn't possibly be because it was a fun experience being on stage wearing an IgNobel-prize winning invention, why that would just be preposterous.

As for tyrsius's implication as to why I'm giving the crowd the thumbs up, it couldn't possibly be because it was a fun experience being on stage wearing an IgNobel-prize winning invention, why that would just be preposterous.

Honestly, with your eyebrows where they are (which is all we can see of your expression), and the smile on her face, it does look like a self-aware "lol bewbs" moment. Not inappropriately sexual, but totally appropriately sexual :-)

That isn't Dr. Bodnar, but another audience volunteer. Also, do we really have to have these kinds of comments every single time a picture of a woman is used in a front page post?

Yes, and excuse me, but if you don't like the response, don't post the content I mean seriously, you post an article with a picture of a women putting a bra on your face and giving the thumbs up... really...

Are you seriously trying to be... serious?

Yeah, the correct response to this would have been "BeowulfSchaeffer, you got me good. In the future, if I'm going to whine about sexist commentary coming from Ars Technica's predominantly nerd demographic, I'll be more careful with the pictures we choose to post."

Even the uneducated understand the linkage between sex and marketing... hot chicks result in page views, period. PhD types definitely don't have an excuse, so there's no point in trying to hide it. The sexual comments are inevitable and come with the territory. Accept that and move past it.

AAAS is the American Association for the Advancement of Science (they publish the journal Science among others things) and their annual conference was held in Boston a few years ago. Jonathan simply mistyped, I believe.

We've also been reporting on our experiences with it in DC for the past few weeks and haven't gotten any complaints about the acronym until today?

I can't speak for the other guy who asked, but I generally only read your "main" news feed, I don't venture to the Science section, where I suspect most of that coverage probably landed. Also, I don't read _every_ story in the main news feed, so I may have skipped your prior AAAS coverage.

Since you can never tell when readers are Kramer-style bursting into room, totally unaware of what has been going on previously, every story is potentially a unique snowflake. I've got no problem googling stuff to fill in some blanks, but the acronym on its own (along with a mistyped time/space anomaly) was somewhat ambiguous.

You might also note how few comments are in threads with the AAAS. Bring a bra into the mix and suddenly arsians are interested.

I actually had no idea what the heck that was, I clicked to find out. Compelling pictures always get my click! This is why I am reading the Elephant story (cute picture!) and skipping the Mortal Kombat story (meh picture).

Actually, looking at the rest of the stories on the homepage, I guess the pictures aren't really the big draw...but wide-eyed, presumably Ars-employed dude with a big, red, at the time unidentified thing on his face was a sure click!